Where Life And Beauty Abound

A YELLOW WARBLER forages for food at the edge of a field at Bartholomews Cobble, a natural area in Sheffield, Mass.

A YELLOW WARBLER forages for food at the edge of a field at Bartholomews Cobble, a natural area in Sheffield, Mass. (BOB MACDONNELL)

STEVE GRANTThe Hartford Courant

Pick a dry, clear summer day; pack a picnic lunch; and resolve that you will unabashedly entrust your soul to the charms of Bartholomew's Cobble, a natural area so rich in flora and fauna, you would think the place was fictional.

Just a shout from the state line at Salisbury, Bartholomew's Cobble is a quiet 329 acres in Sheffield, Mass., beside the Housatonic River in a valley that is woods and water here, farmland over there.

In the understated way of nature, this preserve insists, if gently, that you accept it on its terms, which are anything but demanding. It asks only that you appreciate wooded rock outcrops and the adjoining fields, hills, marshes and riverbank where more than 800 kinds of plants have been counted, including 53 kinds of ferns and fern-like plants and more than 240 bird species.

Take your time, look around and let nature take your train of thought where it will. Don't fight this. Come on a day when you are willing to surrender your psyche for a couple of hours, maybe more.

Whether you know a hay-scented fern from a hay bale or not, Bartholomew's Cobble is a pretty walk. There are 5 miles of trails through varying habitats, none especially difficult for the reasonably fit. Indeed, some of them are short and minimally demanding. And you certainly can have a memorable picnic atop Hurlburt Hill, which is within the preserve and which provides, for not much effort, big views of the Taconics and the Berkshires.

But come for the extraordinarily rich flora and fauna. The cobble is an overflowing cornucopia of plants and animals, most notably the ferns, the wildflowers and the birds. Expect to find ferns in forms you have never seen before, ferns that are not necessarily in the shape of an arching arrowhead.

In places, you can see five kinds of ferns, some rare, growing within inches of each other. Walk the Ledges Trail, which is about a half-mile long and circles the cobble - cobble is another name for a rounded outcrop of bedrock - and there's a good chance you will see in a half-hour more fern species than you've seen in your life.

Ever heard of the walking fern? It's here, and so named because the pointy tips of its long, narrow leaves touch the ground and sprout new plants where they take hold. On a sheer face of the rock ledge along the trail is a colony the size of Donald Trump's ego.

Nearby, take a look at the delicate maidenhair spleenwort, a most graceful fern that grows in a rosette, unlike the popular image of a fern. The bulbet fern is nearby, as is the marginal woodfern and the purple-stemmed cliffbrake. No, you don't have to have a field guide to ferns, though definitely bring one if you have it. (Some of the fern drawings in "A Field Guide to the Ferns," in the Peterson field guide series, were done at the cobble, I'm told.) The preserve sells for $3 a very handy interpretive trail guide that tells you where to spot some of the notable plant species and, in drawings, shows what they look like.

If you have guides to wildflowers, trees or birds, bring them. Wildflowers are everywhere. Last week, big stands of columbine overhung the cobble in places, the blooms just beginning to fade. In late April and early May, the cobble is an excellent place to look for the early woodland wildflowers, including trilliums, Dutchman's-breeches and spring beauty.

The wave of summer wildflowers is just underway and will include so many species of goldenrod - 17 - that you could spend hours on them. The show begins in August with the early blooming goldenrods and continues into November.

Across from the Visitors Center and Natural History Museum, where you park, is a hayfield, part of what is left of the Bartholomew Farm, for which the cobble is named. Before it was the Bartholomew Farm, it was part of a farm owned by Col. John Ashley, whose home is the oldest in Berkshire County and is just down the road, now a museum and worth a visit itself.

Check the field for bobolinks. They are not hard to identify, even if you haven't the foggiest what a bobolink is. They are a curiosity in the bird world; the males have black bellies and a back that appears mostly white, with a dull yellow nape. In the bird world, the opposite - a pale belly and a dark back - is the norm.

Bobolinks are noted for their song, often described as cheerful and bubbly, and their commute. They are among the truly long-distance migrants, wintering 5,000 or more miles away in Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina. While not rare, they're not a bird you're likely to encounter unless you have a field of hay nearby that remains unmown into summer. Their numbers have dropped in recent decades as their preferred habitat has waned.

The preserve abuts the Housatonic, and several of the trails follow its shoreline at times. Watch for bank swallows, which are abundant on one sandy bank. You can see them from the Ledges Trail, where it skirts the river. Here I met Branch Elam of Sheffield, a retired engineer who had his easel set up trailside and, with pastels, was rendering the riverscape. It's that kind of place.

A midday trek up 1,050-foot Hurlburt's Hill is in order. Bring lunch, and follow the trail, perhaps a half-mile, through woods and an upland hayfield to a high point where there is a mowed area with two benches and a view of the Taconics and the Berkshires. Tree swallows were feeding their young in nest boxes last week, and bobolinks periodically appeared and disappeared in the tall grass.

Spread a blanket in the short grass, enjoy the quiet and take in the show.